Sound is a major part of what makes robots so cool (oh, and they shoot lasers – not bad either!).
In the past few months, there’ve been some really interesting new libraries released that’ll help you get those robot sound effects just right – from robotic voices and vocalizations, movements and impacts, futuristic weapons and much more.

I’ve picked some highlights below. Grab what you need, and you’re well on your way to building that robot army you’ve always dreamed of:

Update: New Robot SFX Arrivals:

The Cyborg Collection features a wide assortment of over 3000 Sci-Fi sound effects ranging from small user interfaces to massive robots.

Everything from simple droids to powerful plasma rifles and futuristic transformations are included in this 3.2GB library. Check out the track listing here to see the variety of robots, interfaces, weaponry, vehicles and spacecraft included in the collection.

Exosuit contains a large number of armored sound FX ready to use. Inside this turbocharged bio-suit you will find an arsenal of mechanized pieces of equipment noises and mechanical sequences.

Also included are sampled organic sounds, metallic impacts, chain sounds, pneumatic and hissing air sounds, whooshes, explosions, electric arcs and surges and diverse ranges of alien weapons (grenade launcher, a variant of the ARC Gun and missiles). All files are named and sorted thematically.

The Metal Scrap library was recorded at a scrapyard where they do nothing but shredding, cutting, breaking and moving metal of all sorts, all day long.

Metal Scrap includes:

• Large metallic objects and metal debris being drooped by huge cranes, into and onto various surfaces.
• The end of the Conveyer belt, where the smaller pieces of metal junk fall onto a bigger pile af junk.
• Lots of metallic destruction and impacts, huge and small.

For the typically-metallic robot bodies, metal scrap offers some good sounds for movement – and for those metallic impacts. For more hard-hitting impact sounds, check out the Just Impacts – Processed library too.

Mechanical and buzzing:

Servo sounds are perfect for robotic movement sounds – used as-is for smaller, precise movement sounds, or processed for larger, mechanical motor sounds. This library offers up a great selection to work from.

HumBuzz is a versatile collection 113 tech-noise-sounds with a length from 7 to 27 seconds.
The files were created by capturing the electromagnetic fields of fridges, microwaves, boilers, cell phones, TVs and computers.

“Robot Voices” is a collection of designed vocal expressions of 50 friendly and very talkative robotic creatures. If Wall-E and R2D2 were throwing a cocktail party this is probably what you would hear! A total of 50 robotic creatures are included.

Looking for some charming, nonsensical robot voices? This SFX library from Shapingwaves gets you 50 different robotic characters to work with, in the lively, chatty style of R2D2 and Wall-E – and beyond.

The first three bands were recorded from the output of different radio receivers at 96 kHz via a Crane Song HEDD (Harmonically Enhanced Digital Device) to add warmth and tube/analog sonic color to the recordings. All the samples have been carefully selected from these recording sessions, with the addition of just a little dsp processing to widen the stereo field.

The Kyma folder also contains unique audio files entirely synthesised in the SSC Kyma+Paca(rana) environment. A group of SFX called Vocal is the result of “destroyed” dialogues and vocal sources via spectral processing.

For futuristic communication sounds, Transmission Apparatus is a powerhouse. Featuring five different categories of comms sounds, there’s lots of material to create those futuristic communication sounds and volcalizations. Also comes in a Kontak version for further tweakability.

Bonus: All-in-one robot libraries:

If you’d rather just grab one pack of robot sounds and be done with it, these two libraries are well worth checking out:

Robobiotics is an exciting new sound effects collection from The Library by Empty Sea. It delivers 3600+ original sound effects for scifi and robots. We’re talking about almost 3 hours of material here.

We spent over a year recording and designing Lasers, Robot Vox, Impacts, Servos, Ratcheting Metal, Ambiances, Transformations, Foley, Vehicle Bys and much much more!

The Vintage Anime Sound Effects Library brings all of the excitement of your favorite Japanese animated series to your fingertips. Inspired by classic cartoons from the 80's and 90's, these recognizable and versatile sounds will instantly enhance any FX collection. Vintage synths were used to create the auras, beams, mecha blasters, atmospheres, magic spells, guns, sonic blasts and explosives that makeup this pack of over 350+ custom 24bit/96khz .WAV files. Perfect for film, video games, podcasts and any project that could benefit from a power up!

Swordfighter is a robust package with sharp sounding swords, heaps of variations and all the extras you need to make a fight come alive. Build unique sword swings with various hits, swooshes, schings, different fighter vocals and impacts on various surfaces. All up there are 137 sword sounds, 93 surface impact sounds, 15 knife throwing sounds, 48 swooshes and 180 fighter vocals.

This version includes two sub-folders: one optimised for a film & TV workflow and the other optimised for video games workflow. Plus a few bonus sounds of a charging army.

Glacier Ice is a library containing over 300 high quality sounds of ice cracking, breaking, shattering in various sizes of blocks – recorded entirely in the Italian Alps over the course of two winters.

The library contains sounds of all dimensions, from ice cubes being dropped in a drink to a designed iceberg collapsing.

The majority of the material was recorded at 192 KHz with a Sanken CO100K and a stereo pair of Sennheiser MKH8040, making this library greatly flexible for pitch shifting and all sorts of heavy processing.

A small section recorded at 96KHz features sounds recorded exclusively with contact microphones placed directly on the surface of a frozen water stream.

Bonus: Two extra libraries included for free:

This library also includes two additional releases from Mattia Cellotto - for free: Crunch Mode delivers 230 crunchy sounds made with a variety of vegetables, fresh bread, pizza crust and a selection of frozen goods. The Borax Experiment gets you 158 squishy, gory, slimy and gooey sounds.

Thanks for the round-up, I hope this saves time for others seeking to make mechanical beasts come alive. This has been an emerging trend in recent years (if we can make some sort of parallel to a surging sector of the stock market), in part due to movies/trailers like Transformers.

Another I’d highly recommend which isn’t in your shop (yet, haha) is Twisted Tools’ aptly-titled Transform: http://twistedtools.com/shop/samplepacks/transform/ and some of their other titles too.